Ultraviolet light robot kills Ebola in two minutes; why doesn’t every hospital have one of these?

(NaturalNews) While vaccine makers and drug companies are rushing to bring medical interventions to the market that might address the Ebola pandemic, there’s already a technology available right now that can kill Ebola in just two minutes in hospitals, quarantine centers, commercial offices and even public schools.

It’s called the Xenex Germ-Zapping Robot, and it was invented by a team of Texas doctors whose company is based on San Antonio. (And no, I didn’t get paid to write this. I’m covering this because this technology appears to be a viable lifesaving invention.)

The Xenex Germ-Zapping Robot uses pulsed xenon-generated UV light to achieve what the company calls “the advanced environmental cleaning of healthcare facilities.” Because ultraviolet light destroys the integrity of the RNA that viruses are made of, it renders viruses “dead.” (Viruses aren’t really alive in the first place, technically speaking, so the correct term is “nonviable.”)

Ebola, just like most other viruses, are quickly destroyed by UV light. That’s why Ebola likes to spread in dark places where sunlight doesn’t reach. (Think of Ebola as a “vampire” virus that feeds off human blood but shuns sunlight…) The Xenex robot destroys Ebola on surfaces in just two minutes, zapping them with a specific wavelength of UV light at concentrations that are 25,000 times higher than natural sunlight.

Kill Ebola with electricity and UV light; no toxic chemicals needed

The reason I’m covering this medical technology is because I’m seriously impressed with the concept and the green technology behind it. The Xenex unit generates UV light using xenon — one of the noble gases — rather than toxic mercury. So there’s no toxic mercury to deal with, even when disposing of the equipment after its useful life.

So many of the approaches to disinfection in hospitals today are based on harsh, toxic chemicals that pose a secondary risk to the health of hospital patients and staff. But UV light emitted by the Xenex robot leaves no chemical residue whatsoever and requires no chemical manufacturing plant to manufacture. This is truly “light medicine” because it disinfects using specific frequencies of light.

– 62% reduction in microbial load at the St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center

Already in 250 hospitals and growing…

The Xenex UV robot is already being used in about 250 hospitals. That number is likely to increase dramatically due to the current global Ebola outbreak.

The base price of the Xenex unit is around $100,000, and the unit pays for itself very quickly by preventing expensive infections. It can disinfect a typical hospital room in about 10 minutes, and it comes with organization and scheduling software that allows hospital staff to keep track of which rooms have been treated.

How Tanning Changes the Brain

Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesThe brains of frequent tanners may be similar to those of addicts.

People who frequently use tanning beds experience changes in brain activity during their tanning sessions that mimic the patterns of drug addiction, new research shows.

Scientists have suspected for some time that frequent exposure to ultraviolet radiation has the potential to become addictive, but the new research is the first to actually peer inside the brains of people as they lay in tanning beds.

What the researchers found was that several parts of the brain that play a role in addiction were activated when the subjects were exposed to UV rays. The findings, which appear in the coming issue of the journal Addiction Biology, may help explain why some people continue to tan often despite awareness about risks such as skin cancer, premature aging and wrinkles.

“What this shows is that the brain is in fact responding to UV light, and it responds in areas that are associated with reward,” said Dr. Bryon Adinoff, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and an author of the study. “These are areas, particularly the striatum, that we see activated when someone is administered a drug or a high-value food like sugar.”